Chromis’s 90g Acropora tank

[Chromis]

I got a little closer to taking a decent pic of my chromises with my phone:

The chromis in front is a black axil variety, the one behind is a blue-green. The black axil is like an amp-ed up blue green chromis: more color, larger, more aggression and more active with longer streamers. If the marine biologists hadn’t decided these are different species, I’d have guessed the black axils and blue-greens are just male and female of the same species.

 

[Coral reefer]

Nice chalices of course! I didn’t know about the different chromis types.

 

[Ibn]

Looks like those Chromids are doing well! They're actually a different species at the moment, but can't say down the line as there are always ongoing revisions to nomenclatures.

 

[Chromis]

Nice chalices of course! I didn’t know about the different chromis types.

I didn’t know either until @Ibn pointed this out when he saw my tank a while back!

 

[Chromis]

Looks like those Chromids are doing well! They're actually a different species at the moment, but can't say down the line as there are always ongoing revisions to nomenclatures.

Yes and I still have your two! One example is a couple years ago torches (euphyllia) split off from hammers, frogspawns and octospawns (fimbriaphyllias) and I don’t think anyone has figured out what frammers are yet!

 

[Chromis]

Another boring ICP test, I though my iodine was getting low but apparently bordering too high, although I don’t put too much stock in the accuracy of these tests. I wonder if the Red Sea AB+ contains iodine similar to Fuel and FWS? Will probably quit it after the current bottle is empty in favor of plain old amino acids (Acropower etc). I don’t think I’m going to entertain any more supplements that don’t explicitly list ingredients. To me, the value in a supplement is they can guarantee x amount of y in a given dosage - so quality control is more important to me than claiming to have some magical and secret acro coloration formula.

 

[Ibn]

Yep, if you're gonna dose anything along the lines of aminos, just keep it simple and go with Acropower.

 

[ofzakaria]

Another boring ICP test, I though my iodine was getting low but apparently bordering too high, although I don’t put too much stock in the accuracy of these tests. I wonder if the Red Sea AB+ contains iodine similar to Fuel and FWS? Will probably quit it after the current bottle is empty in favor of plain old amino acids (Acropower etc). I don’t think I’m going to entertain any more supplements that don’t explicitly list ingredients. To me, the value in a supplement is they can guarantee x amount of y in a given dosage - so quality control is more important to me than claiming to have some magical and secret acro coloration formula.

Are you keeping your po4 high on purpose?
Whats your NO3 levels like?

 

[Chromis]

Are you keeping your po4 high on purpose?
Whats your NO3 levels like?

According to my Red Sea kit phosphate has been between .04-.08 for most of the past 2 years, with some occasional low (.02) or highs (.10). I’m thinking because they test phosphorus at .10 user still has to convert it to phosphate, per the Hanna chart that would be around .03 phosphate. I heard in a Lou Ekus talk that acros don’t absorb phosphate effectively below .04ppm so .03 worries me, I will increase feeding to raise the PO4 again.

And same test kit has measured nitrate between .1 and 1ppm the past couple years but it’s usually around .25-.5ppm.

A few days ago I was trying out Tropic Marin Plus-NP and so far it is not doing what it is supposed to, which is safely carbon dose without lowering N,P levels, because I see N and P coming down. So that supplement has stopped for now since I don’t want to be dosing N,P as well as Plus-NP.

 

[Chromis]

I’m really worried about my RR Dragonite, I didn’t notice until today that the color has faded. I didn’t see any areas where other corals could be growing into or stinging it. Hopefully it’s just getting too shaded. Going to clip the Vivid confetti above it. Sunny D palys are also overgrown but I just do not feel like pulling that rock out and fragging palys (ever again)! This is a blue light orange filter photo

I was messing around with blue light to try to find any color in my HW. Nope! She’s a mean green machine. Will frag that one too to see if it looks better under Radions in another tank, just hope I don’t get carried away fragging…

 

[NanoCrazed]

Wow... that is green...

Hopefully your RR Dragonite bounces back soon!

 

[H2OPlayar]

Sunny D palys are also overgrown but I just do not feel like pulling that rock out and fragging palys (ever again)!

Do you not like fragging palys? I have been doing a lot of zoa fragging lately and could frag some for you. If the rock is just a pain to get out, that's another story

 

[Baykes]

Wow Liz, the colors you bring out in your tank are just amazing and that chalice rock is awesome! Would love to see this in person!

For the sunny Ds, why not just frag in tank?

 

[Chromis]

@Baykes @H2OPlayar I am not good at fragging palys in the tank without breaking other corals or losing some of the palys to the abyss (that’s what I call places I can’t reach in the tank, where palys like to attach and grow in places I don’t want them). Last time I fragged this rock, I removed it, place it on a towel on the floor, and bludgeoned it with a chisel from the edges of the paly mat. I need to remove like a 6”x3” swath of sunny Ds to make space for the Utter Chaos they are cramping again.

 

[Chromis]

So I removed my skimmer, which was fed by a CO2 scrubber, over a month ago. For some reason the tank pH improved and nutrients dropped if anything during that time. I did notice algae growing faster in the refugium, maybe because it had more nutrients and space in the sump without the skimmer there.

This is the pH after a month without skimming at all, going to fire the skimmer back up today and compare pH next week. I am starting to worry that without skimming, stuff (soap residues from my hands?) can build up.

 

[H2OPlayar]

@Baykes @H2OPlayar I am not good at fragging palys in the tank without breaking other corals or losing some of the palys to the abyss (that’s what I call places I can’t reach in the tank, where palys like to attach and grow in places I don’t want them). Last time I fragged this rock, I removed it, place it on a towel on the floor, and bludgeoned it with a chisel from the edges of the paly mat. I need to remove like a 6”x3” swath of sunny Ds to make space for the Utter Chaos they are cramping again.

I have a few other tools which might help, like a large plastic bin to catch rock shrapnel and hand held rock cutters. I am happy to lend you the tools if you'd like to give it a go, or I can come over one day and we can work at it together since you are pretty close to me.

 

[sfsuphysics]

That is a bit shocking, that pH increases with the removal of a skimmer, unless your home is simply filled with living creatures (non-plants) and just exhaling ghastly amounts of CO2 all day long.

I assume you did a lot of working from home over the past 18 months? Maybe that had something to do with it.

 

[Chromis]

That is a bit shocking, that pH increases with the removal of a skimmer, unless your home is simply filled with living creatures (non-plants) and just exhaling ghastly amounts of CO2 all day long.

I assume you did a lot of working from home over the past 18 months? Maybe that had something to do with it.

Yea, the CO2 scrubber got added when kids were learning from home and we were WFH. But we usually have windows open and CO2 meter usually says CO2 is low in the room.

 

[Chromis]

So after not skimmer for a month or more, I ran the skimmer for about an hour and got a few mms of green water. I dumped that out and ran it another 8 hours overnight, and got some very green water. Wondering if my tank has its own phytoplankton culture that took off without skimming, I checked it out under the microscope. Could this be some kind of phytoplankton - if it’s regular surface algae not sure how I could skim so much of it overnight? I diluted it about 100x in tank water and set it up in jars to observe to see if it ends up growing on the surface or blooms in the water like phyto.

 

[Patio]

Very curious!